ing equal, a man of fifty will have greater confidence in a total
abstainer than in a man of identical capacity who uses alcohol
moderately; a mother will give better vitality and better care to her
children without than with alcohol; a policeman or fireman or
stenographer is more apt to win promotion without than with alcohol.
Whatever the physical ailment, there is in every instance a better
remedy for an acute trouble, and infinitely better remedies for
deep-seated troubles, than alcoholics.

The percentage of failure to use alcoholics moderately is so high, the
uncertainty as to a particular individual's ability to drink moderately
is so great, as to lead certain insurance companies, first, to give
preference to men who never use alcoholics, and later, to refuse to
insure moderate drinkers. Life insurance companies have the general
rule that habitual drinkers are bad risks, as the alcohol habit is
prejudicial to health and longevity; but they have no means of studying
the risk of moderate drinkers, because, except where alcohol has
already left a permanent impression upon the system, the indications
are by no means such as to enable the medical examiner to trace its
existence with certainty. For this reason the life insurance companies
have little effect in _preventing_ alcoholism. Though they are agreed
that habitual drinkers ought to be declined altogether, only a few
companies have taken the decided stand of declining them. "Habitual
drinkers, if not too excessive, are admitted into the general class
where the expected mortality, according to the experience of the
Pennsylvania Mutual Life Insurance Company, is 80 per cent, as against
56 per cent for the temperate class. Though it is only necessary to
look over the death losses presented each day to see that intemperance
in the use of liquors, as shown by cirrhosis of the liver, Bright's
disease, diseases of the heart, brain, and nervous system, is the cause
of a large proportion of the deaths, these companies prefer to grade
the premiums accordingly rather than to decline habitual drinkers
altogether. While this is partly due to the difficulty and expense of
diagnosis, it is more probably due to an objection to take a definite
stand on the temperance question."

Thus the insurance companies' rules touch only the confirmed drinker,
whose physique is often irreparably injured. One company writes: "Men
who have been intemperate and taken the Keeley or other cures a